As universities and colleges increase their tuition, a larger share of it is falling on the lowest-income students and their families.

Those are among the findings of an investigation by The Hechinger Report, the Dallas Morning News, and the Education Writers Association, which used federal data to show that lower-income and working-class students at private colleges and universities have seen the amount they pay, after grants and scholarships, increase faster than the amount their middle- and upper-income classmates pay.

Then again, as costs rise, even people in higher income brackets may have trouble paying. It’s a complicated topic that was the subject of this segment on the National Public Radio program Here & Now, with The Hechinger Report’s higher-education editor, Jon Marcus.

]]>http://hechingered.org/content/6595_6595/feed/0So how are college graduates really doing? A few schools are willing to tell ushttp://hechingered.org/content/so-how-are-college-graduates-really-doing-a-few-schools-are-willing-to-tell-us_6544/
http://hechingered.org/content/so-how-are-college-graduates-really-doing-a-few-schools-are-willing-to-tell-us_6544/#commentsThu, 30 Jan 2014 17:11:31 +0000http://hechingered.org/?p=6544A word rarely uttered on college tours sits atop the website of St. Olaf, a small liberal-arts college south of Minneapolis with an annual estimated cost of $51,860.

Next to clickable categories about arts and athletics appears the unlikely word “outcomes.’’

And if you click on the word, a headline materializes promising “The Return on Investing in a St. Olaf Education.’’

A few more clicks and you can learn what becomes of graduates after four years on its sylvan campus along the Cannon River. For example: Where will a St. Olaf education lead? Then there is “What Happens After Graduation: Recent Alumni Data,’’ along with retention and graduation rates, and “evidence of learning.”

This new level of candor sounds like an answer to growing concerns of parents, politicians, and foundations concerned about the value for money of a higher education—and of students worried about finding jobs and repaying college loans.

And it’s part of a new wave in higher education.

Concerns that the rising costs are leaving too many behind are increasingly accompanied by fears that today’s college graduates lack sufficient workforce skills—or that they aren’t learning enough.

That contention is backed up by separate survey of employers, more than 40 percent of whom don’t think colleges are teaching students what they need to know to succeed. One third said graduates aren’t qualified for even entry-level work, as we reported in September.

Concerns about the economy, employment, and the role of liberal-arts colleges fueled St. Olaf’s decision to publish detailed employment and salary data beginning in 2012—to the applause of applicants and alumni—says its president, David Anderson.

“Parents love it,’’ says Anderson, who makes the case in a video posted on the site.

What St. Olaf shares “goes way beyond other colleges,’’ Anderson says, adding that he hopes more “will be equally transparent.”

St. Olaf’s move comes at a time when higher education is increasingly on the defensive, and as President Barack Obama is pushing to increase the college-going rates of low-income students in particular, who can’t even consider schools with price tags like St. Olaf’s without major discounts.

The question of what students of all kinds are learning from their college experience—and earning once they get out—is the one Anderson focused on at the annual meeting of the AAC&U, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, where tensions facing higher education were clear in session titles. One on the future of liberal arts carried an ominous question: “Preparing for the Apocalypse?”

“We go to meetings, read articles and books, and listen to talks all dedicated to the assumption that higher education, as we know it, and particularly the liberal arts, is doomed,’’ wrote Jim Salvucci, dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Stevenson University in Maryland, in a blog published after the meeting. “One could hear solution-rich pragmatism amid the zeitgeist of sinking anxiety in many panels and presentations.’’

Colleges like St. Olaf are trying to get out ahead, as is the AAC&U through initiatives that champion the value of the liberal arts.

Increasingly, as The Hechinger Reportreported this week, college students are being asked to take exit tests to determine what they learned—something many colleges and universities have resisted.

That’s one reason why Massachusetts is also trying to get out ahead of the trend. State Education Commissioner Richard M. Freeland will lead a group of nine states in developing a way to measure and compare what students learn in college without standardized tests, using class work, labs, and other measures.

“There is tremendous interest in this nationally, because everybody in higher education knows, if this doesn’t work, the next answer is a standardized test probably imposed by the federal government or by states,” Freeland said during a meeting of the state’s higher education board, according to the Boston Globe.

Freeland told The Globe that the project addresses a concern he had as President of Northeastern University from 1996 to 2006, where he would hand out thousands of degrees each spring.

“I’d be thinking to myself, ‘So what do they really know? What do I know about what they know?’ I always had to be honest and say to myself, ‘I don’t really know, and nobody else does either,’ ” he said.

Anderson, of St. Olaf, disagrees, and says his college’s new approach, which also includes far more robust career counseling, is an answer to skeptics.

“A liberal-arts degree gives you the knowledge base, skills, competencies and habits of mind that will enable you to flourish,’’ he says. “College can’t be a black box.”

]]>http://hechingered.org/content/so-how-are-college-graduates-really-doing-a-few-schools-are-willing-to-tell-us_6544/feed/2Letting cities lead the way to more college graduateshttp://hechingered.org/content/letting-cities-lead-the-way-to-more-college-graduates_6487/
http://hechingered.org/content/letting-cities-lead-the-way-to-more-college-graduates_6487/#commentsWed, 04 Dec 2013 20:32:19 +0000http://hechingered.org/?p=6487Want more college graduates in the U.S.? One place to start is close to home.

Foundations and community groups are partnering with twenty American cities as part of a new effort aimed at increasing the number of residents with postsecondary credentials.

Foundations and community groups are partnering with twenty American cities as part of a new effort aimed at increasing the number of residents with postsecondary credentials.

Everything from technical and planning assistance to data tools and access to a network of education leaders and support groups will be made available free of cost, thanks to an investment from The Lumina Foundation, the nation’s largest private foundation committed to increasing the proportion of Americans with high-quality degrees and credentials.

For example, Lumina will be working with Pittsburgh Promise, a local community group in Pittsburgh that offers resources to adult learners. It will also cooperate with The Say Yes To Education Foundation in Syracuse, N.Y. which provides eligible students with guaranteed tuition assistance.

“I think that’s the cool thing about this program is that it’s respecting the cities’ ownership of all of this,” said Haley Glover, Lumina’s director of convening strategy, during a conference call on Wednesday. Glover emphasized that cities had different goals for their communities and that the foundation was open to helping them achieve.

“They are the ones doing the work. They are the ones leading the way. So, we want to be as supportive as we can.’’ Glover said.

Lumina President and CEO Jamie Merisotis said the new initiative arose from a belief the national debate around higher education comes from a “top-bottom perspective,’’ set by government sectors, education groups and foundations.

Yet local communities are the ones most affected economically by whether or not their residents have college credentials.

“So our intent is that if we work with employers and city leaders community based organizations, K- 12 schools, colleges universities and others is to provide resources, knowledge, expertise as well as financial support, and most importantly the ability to build relationships with other communities through creation of a network,” Merisotis said.

The cities chosen are the first cohort of a total of 75 cities Lumina hopes to add to next year. They were chosen based on three criteria: if they had set clear college goals, showed evidence of using practical methods to achieve these goals and had a focused population to work with.

]]>http://hechingered.org/content/letting-cities-lead-the-way-to-more-college-graduates_6487/feed/1Conflicting ideas about how to rate teacher prep programshttp://hechingered.org/content/conflicting-ideas-about-how-to-rate-teacher-prep-programs_6338/
http://hechingered.org/content/conflicting-ideas-about-how-to-rate-teacher-prep-programs_6338/#commentsTue, 20 Aug 2013 13:43:06 +0000http://hechingered.org/?p=6338After winning a hard-fought battle against the teachers union to impose a new teacher evaluation system, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has turned to evaluating the training programs that produce the city’s teachers.

The New York City Department of Education recently released what it dubs as “the nation’s first ever district level Teacher Preparation Program Reports” comparing how well a dozen of the state’s public and private institutions train teacher-candidates. But the findings are, at times, incongruous with those of national teacher preparation ratings released in June.

Click to enlarge

Those ratings, by the nonprofit advocacy group National Council on Teacher Quality, which has been a vocal critic of teacher preparation programs, were based heavily on education school curriculum and selectivity. The New York City reports focused primarily on the training program’s graduates, including measures such as the percentage of graduates who work in high-needs schools licensed in high-demand areas like science and special education and the percentage that have received tenure. It also evaluates the training programs on how well the teachers they produce scored on the city’s new evaluation system, which is based partly on standardized test scores.

Adelphi University is an example of the discrepancies between the two rating systems – and evidence of the conflict in the field over how best to judge whether teacher education programs are training teachers effectively.

Adelphi’s graduate elementary education program received one out of four stars from NCTQ. Its undergraduate elementary program failed to earn a single star and was labeled with a “consumer alert.”

According to New York City report, however, 68 percent of Adelphi teachers working in the city schools are effective and 12 percent are highly effective – a respectable showing. Teachers College, ColumbiaUniversity, a private program, fared similarly in the New York City rating with 69 percent of its graduates rated as effective and 10 percent highly effective. The school did not provide information about its syllabi and other factors included in the NCTQ rating system, so it didn’t receive an NCTQ rating. (The Hechinger Report is an independent organization housed at Teachers College.)

On the New York City reports, public colleges like those belonging to the City University of New York (CUNY) outperformed some prestigious private schools in certain areas. For example, 82 percent of teachers from CUNY City College were rated effective based on by how much they were able to improve their students’ test scores, compared to 71 percent from New York University. At the top end, the City University of New York and St. John’s University each only had about 10 percent of graduates who fell below the effective rating. Lehman College fared the worst, with a quarter of graduates rated as developing and 14 percent ineffective.

Because of a small sample size of teachers from each institution, the New York City Department of Education recommended interpreting the data cautiously. Unlike NCTQ, the DOE report, which uses data from the last four years, shied away from assigning ratings to schools and in some cases, programs differed starkly on how they fared on each measure. For instance, just 16 percent of QueensCollege graduates go into the city’s highest need schools, the lowest percentage among all the programs. But the school boasts the second highest retention rate with 92 percent of teachers still in the classroom after three years.

Adelphi, Mercy College, and Touro College, all private institutions, led the ranks in how many of their graduates are licensed in high-demand areas, such as math and special education. The reports show that 86 percent of the DOE’s hires from Touro are licensed special education teachers. On the other hand, only 33 percent of New York University teachers in the city schools had a special education license.

The NCTQ system does not have an overall rating for Touro or Mercy College, and only graded them on a couple of features like Common Core content and selectivity. Touro received mixed grades. For example, its elementary graduate program received just one star for Common Core content, while its high school program received four stars for Common Core, something not evaluated in the New York City scorecards.

The mixed results raise the same question plaguing teacher quality ratings: which factors matter most to measure how good or bad a teacher is?

]]>http://hechingered.org/content/conflicting-ideas-about-how-to-rate-teacher-prep-programs_6338/feed/0Massachusetts boards performance funding trainhttp://hechingered.org/content/massachusetts-boards-performance-funding-train_6334/
http://hechingered.org/content/massachusetts-boards-performance-funding-train_6334/#commentsWed, 14 Aug 2013 14:43:51 +0000http://hechingered.org/?p=6334With the announcement that Massachusetts community colleges will be funded based on graduation rates and other measures, Hechinger’s Jon Marcus spoke about this national trend on public-radio station WBUR’s Radio Boston program.

North Shore Community College in Massachusetts (Photo: Elizabeth Thomsen)

The state joins dozens of others in which public higher education competes for dwindling state funding based on outcomes, not just enrollment.

Some states are also imposing penalties for poor performance.

In Massachusetts, the shift is being accompanied by a $20 million—or just under 10 percent—increase in the budget allocation for the 15 community colleges, whose enrollment has ballooned while funding has been relatively flat.

One result is that only about 18 percent of students at the two-year schools receive degrees within even three years, about the same low rate as the national average.

With a lower level of unemployment than most other states, Massachusetts is having trouble filling so-called middle-skills jobs that require associate’s degrees, and businesses have been critical of the community colleges’ record in job training.

The new funding formula will be phased in over three years.

]]>http://hechingered.org/content/massachusetts-boards-performance-funding-train_6334/feed/0Are families reaching the limit for college costs?http://hechingered.org/content/are-families-reaching-the-limit-for-college-costs_6314/
http://hechingered.org/content/are-families-reaching-the-limit-for-college-costs_6314/#commentsTue, 23 Jul 2013 20:22:14 +0000http://hechingered.org/?p=6314Hechinger’s Jon Marcus appears on the radio program Here & Now to talk about a Sallie Mae report that shows what families pay for college has leveled off as parents and students become resistant to further price increases — and universities and colleges have to offer deeper and deeper discounts to fill seats.
]]>http://hechingered.org/content/are-families-reaching-the-limit-for-college-costs_6314/feed/0Can students trust information from admissions offices?http://hechingered.org/content/can-students-trust-the-information-from-admissions-offices_6186/
http://hechingered.org/content/can-students-trust-the-information-from-admissions-offices_6186/#commentsMon, 08 Apr 2013 20:53:46 +0000http://hechingered.org/?p=6186

As students choose their colleges for next year, Hechinger contributing editor Jon Marcus speaks on Here and Now about whether they can trust the information they receive from admissions offices.

Several have been caught misrepresenting test score and other information to improve the way they look to prospective students and rise up the college rankings. In the past year alone, six top colleges and universities have admitted falsifying information sent to the U.S. Department of Education, their own accrediting agencies, and U.S. News & World Report, whose college rankings remain the nation’s most prominent. Another was caught the year before.

For many of the schools, the misrepresentations had gone on for years. One law school has also been fined, another has been placed on probation by its accrediting agency, and 15 others have faced lawsuits for fraud, unfair competition, and false advertising for allegedly misreporting graduates’ job-placement rates.

]]>http://hechingered.org/content/can-students-trust-the-information-from-admissions-offices_6186/feed/0Can we please change the conversation about college admissions?http://hechingered.org/content/can-we-please-change-the-conversation-about-college-admissions_6164/
http://hechingered.org/content/can-we-please-change-the-conversation-about-college-admissions_6164/#commentsThu, 04 Apr 2013 05:29:51 +0000http://hechingered.org/?p=6164If you’re spending any time in the company of ambitious high-school seniors or hyper-competitive parents these days, you may be reading Facebook posts with status updates proclaiming acceptances at prestigious colleges:

“Dartmouth! Duke! Vassar! Swag! I’m three for three!”

You may not read about rejections, but you will certainly hear plenty about them, along with much speculation about who got in and who didn’t—as well as some malicious gossip like, “I cannot believe Diana got into Yale and Stephen didn’t. Do you think she knew someone? His SAT scores were so much higher…”

Listen closely, and the list of rejected valedictorians, team captains and accomplished test-takers will go on and on. You may even hear navel-gazing parents and students who received too many thin envelopes ask themselves, “Where did we go wrong?”

We go wrong by engaging in this wrong-headed, waste-of-time conversation at all, and by comparing our kids’ test scores and GPAs, their merits and drawbacks. Sure, it’s seductive to be drawn into side-by-side comparisons and speculate about the “secret formula” for getting into top schools like Brown University, where 28,919 applicants vied for acceptances that totaled just 2,649.

In the new comedy Admission, the Princeton admissions officer played by Tina Fey is repeatedly asked to divulge that formula.

“Just be yourself,” Fey falsely answers. The film illustrates how largely unsuccessful such advice is by showing a parade of accomplished applicants falling through the floor of Princeton’s committee room and into oblivion.

Unfortunately, the movie perpetuates Ivy League angst, promoting the wrong conversation in a country where community colleges enroll more than half of the students in higher education—and where the percentage of Americans between the ages of 25 and 64 with a two- or four-year college degree is just 38.7 percent.

College costs may be one reason. They’ve jumped 440 percent in the last 25 years—which is three times the rate of inflation. A year at Princeton costs $56,750. Two-thirds of students who graduated from a U.S. college in 2011 had loan debt, averaging $26,500 per borrower.

Listen to complaints about how many students are rejected from top schools with near-perfect SAT scores and it will be easy to ignore a more jarring statistic: scores on the exams used in college admissions have plummeted in recent years, suggesting that more students today are struggling with vocabulary, the meanings of words, sentence structure and math problems.

In reporting trips to schools in the impoverished state of Mississippi, I’ve been able to see up close the many challenges that keep higher education beyond the reach of the poor—and the poorly educated. Students there have the lowest ACT scores in the nation, averaging 18.7 points, which is well below the national mean of 21.1. The maximum score on the ACT is 36; many top colleges want to see scores of 30 or above.

You won’t see too many stories about it, though. Major media attention tends to focus on elite schools and who gets into Harvard, a topic I devoted years to covering as a higher-education reporter because editors insisted that readers find it fascinating.

The reporting reinforced my suspicion that there is almost nothing affluent parents with checkbooks at the ready won’t do—starting well before preschool—to give their progeny a leg up. That might mean hiring consultants who charge up to $40,000 to orchestrate college applications, or sending their teenagers off to a four-day application “boot camp” that costs $14,000.

The answer? They often struggle mightily, a fact that elite college presidents have picked up on; some have spoken out about the need to attract more students who don’t come from affluent backgrounds and do more to make them feel comfortable.

The strategy sounds great, but low-income students with top grades and scores often don’t even apply to the most prestigious schools.

In fact, only a tiny fraction of students even consider applying to or attending elite institutions, according to Arthur Levine, former president of Teachers College, Columbia University, and now head of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.

“A few years ago, I met a young woman who had been ostracized by her parents because she only got into Wesleyan, [the University of] Chicago and Swarthmore,” said Levine, adding that the problem is also a changing economy that requires postsecondary education.

“When four percent of the college-age population attended higher education in 1900, everyone shopped at Tiffany’s,” he said. “With more than 70 percent of high-school grads entering postsecondary education [now], it’s more like shopping at Walmart—so there is greater pressure to attend a university that marks or differentiates one from the Walmart shoppers.”

We’ve also reported how a community-college degree can be lucrative—and that significant numbers of grads are getting better jobs and earning more at the start of their careers than those with bachelor’s degrees.

In his review of Admission, New York Timesmovie critic A.O. Scott notes that he is “the father of a high school junior, paying my tithe to the test prep gods while preparing to sacrifice most of my worldly goods on the altar of the liberal arts…”

Scott added: “How could anyone make light of the brutal, capricious system by which our young people are judged and sorted?”

People do so because the target is an easy one, and the conversation isn’t changing—though it should be.

I asked Thacker—who said he doesn’t plan to see Admission—for some ideas. His long list includes guidance for parents, teachers and students on how to change “the market-drenched admissions process,” which he says imperils qualities like curiosity and risk-taking by emphasizing “where a student goes to college over what a student does in college.”

Sounds like a good start to me.

]]>http://hechingered.org/content/can-we-please-change-the-conversation-about-college-admissions_6164/feed/8What does the future hold for college costs and enrollment?http://hechingered.org/content/what-does-the-future-hold-for-college-costs-and-enrollment_6024/
http://hechingered.org/content/what-does-the-future-hold-for-college-costs-and-enrollment_6024/#commentsWed, 16 Jan 2013 22:37:04 +0000http://hechingered.org/?p=6024As the new semester gets under way at many colleges and universities, Hechinger’s Jon Marcus speaks with Here & Now host Robin Young about trends in cost and enrollment, and market forces coming to bear in the decision-making process.

]]>http://hechingered.org/content/what-does-the-future-hold-for-college-costs-and-enrollment_6024/feed/0Boards of trustees think the price of college is just about righthttp://hechingered.org/content/boards-of-trustees-think-the-price-of-college-is-just-about-right_5936/
http://hechingered.org/content/boards-of-trustees-think-the-price-of-college-is-just-about-right_5936/#commentsMon, 17 Dec 2012 20:51:00 +0000http://hechingered.org/?p=5936The boards of trustees and directors who oversee America’s colleges and universities think higher education has gotten too expensive—just not at their own institutions.

University of Virginia (Photo by Rex Hammock)

In a finding that suggests there’s little sense of urgency among governing boards to rein in the cost of college, more than half of 2,500 board members surveyed said higher education is too pricey. But nearly two-thirds contended that their own schools charge just about the right amount.

Nearly half said their institutions are already doing everything they can to stay affordable.

College costs have jumped 440 percent in the last 25 years, or three times the rate of inflation, outpacing even the spiraling cost of health care. Household income during that period rose only about 150 percent. At many universities, the increases have accelerated since the 2008 economic downturn.

The disconnect comes at a time when governing boards appear to be asserting greater authority over the university administrations they oversee.

The board of visitors at the University of Virginia, for example, ignited a firestorm this year when it tried to remove the president for not moving fast enough in some areas. And while the decision was reversed, it was the latest battle between university administrators and boards of directors and trustees, who have also clashed in Iowa, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas and elsewhere.

The governing panels of private universities are elected by alumni or self-perpetuating, while those of public institutions are generally appointed by governors and legislatures.

Half are businesspeople, 25 percent are professionals and 16 percent are working or retired educators, according to a separate survey that the AGB released last year.

Nearly a third receive no financial training, and more than a quarter admit that they do not undertake much budgetary or financial oversight, the earlier survey found.